[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1342-E1343]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

SEEKING A VIABLE U.N. PATH FORWARD ON SYRIA

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HON. RUSH HOLT

of new jersey

in the house of representatives

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer for the record and the
benefit of my colleagues a recent op-ed in the Huffington Post by
international affairs expert Jeffrey Laurenti. It outlines a sound
broader approach to bringing the tragic civil war in Syria to an end.
Although some of the circumstances have changed since he wrote this
piece, the wisdom of his analysis and recommendation still shows.

[From the Huffington Post, Sept. 12, 2013]

Seeking a Viable U.N. Path Forward on Syria

(By Jeffrey Laurenti)

Public consternation in the United States and abroad about
President Obama's planned ``targeted, limited, and
effective'' punitive strike against Syria confirms the wisdom
of his overall approach to the Syrian crisis the past two
years.
In facing down the caws from Washington hawks for arming
rebels, bombing missile sites, and trying to impose no-fly
zone, Obama has gauged perfectly what Americans--and the
world--expected of him: restraint. As he acknowledged last
week, ``I was elected to end wars, not start them.''
The apparent large-scale use of chemical weapons by the
forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad certainly adds a
new factor to the calculus, both for Obama's personal
credibility and international concerns about weapons of mass
destruction. It may be enough to sway a critical margin in
the Congress to let the president proceed with his planned
strike, which we would have to hope might accomplish its
objective without widening the war.
But there is a good chance the public and Congress will
remain immovable and reject any kind of military involvement
in Syria. With the prudent counsel that St. Luke (14:32)
recorded for political leaders facing possible defeat, the
president's team should already be working now on Plan B: an
ambitious effort to shut down the Syrian civil war
altogether.
Perhaps the administration conceives air strikes as the
lever to push the Syrian resistance to the long-promised
negotiating table with Assad's government. That might be a
plausible strategy for wresting peace from the jaws of wider
war. But even if this is the game plan, the administration
should be laying the groundwork now for the diplomatic
denouement to come--which might even help it on Capitol
Hill--in the U.N. Security Council.
Ah, the United Nations. The institution whose resolutions--
and, by extension, whose Charter restrictions on the use of
force--Obama seemed to dismiss last week as ``hocus pocus,''
delighting his right-wing enemies and shocking the political
support base at home that won him his party's nomination and
the many publics abroad that had cheered his election.
(Those most shocked presumably include the Nobel Committee
that awarded him its Peace Prize in 2009 for having ``created
a new climate in international politics . . ., with emphasis
on the role that the United Nations and other international
institutions can play,'' with ``dialogue and negotiations . .
., preferred as instruments for resolving even the most
difficult international conflicts.'')
Ambassador Samantha Power, a committed multilateralist now
representing America at the United Nations, last week
declared, ``there is no viable path forward in this Security
Council.'' If the path we want the Security Council to travel
is authorizing a U.S. military strike against Syrian
government forces for the grotesque use of chemical weapons,
she is likely right that Russia and China would vote no.
But even so, simply securing a nine-vote council majority
would itself indicate to the Congress and American people
that the red line that U.S. action would be upholding is the
world's, not just Obama's. And it would justify a General
Assembly call for limited military action, giving the gold-
standard international legitimation when discord paralyzes
the Security Council.
Perhaps those votes are just not there. President Bush
abandoned the effort to win a Security Council majority for
his planned invasion of Iraq when he couldn't get more than
four votes. But that was surely the canary in the mineshaft
in 2003, warning against what proved to be a disastrous war.
There is another viable path that the United States could
usefully pursue right now, taking advantage of both the shock
of the Ghouta gas attack and the fears of a U.S. strike's
unintended consequences. It could take a page from the
Security Council's first successful initiative as the Cold
War wound down: its Resolution 598 that forced an end to the
Iran-Iraq war (in which, coincidentally, Iraqi gas attacks
against Iranians also figured).
These might be core elements of such an initiative:
A demand for an immediate ceasefire by all forces in
Syria--the government and the various insurgent factions--
with a short deadline for compliance;
Imposition of full-spectrum sanctions, especially on arms,
on any party that refuses to comply with the cease-fire;
A summons to the Damascus authorities, the Syrian National
Council, and other relevant parties to attend the much-
postponed Kerry-Lavrov-Brahimi peace conference, to be
convened within 30 days, and to negotiate in good faith;
Dispatch of a capably sized United Nations ceasefire
monitoring force to oversee the ceasefire, investigate and
report violations, and protect U.N. weapons inspectors;
Establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry to determine
responsibility for the Ghouta attack and any other reported
chemical weapons use, with a demand that the government and,
in rebel-dominated territory, insurgent groups permit full,
unfettered access for U.N. weapons inspectors to undertake
their investigation of sites of alleged attacks--much as
Resolution 598 created a commission to certify officially who
had started the Iran-Iraq war (surprise conclusion: Saddam);
Referral of the commission's findings of responsibility for
chemical weapons use to the International Criminal Court, or
less ideally an internationally vetted Syrian tribunal, for
criminal prosecution;
A demand that Syria declare to U.N. inspectors its chemical
weapons stocks for their provisional surveillance;
A reaffirmation of the need to kick-start the delayed
conference on elimination of weapons of mass destruction from
the Middle East that was promised at the 2010 nuclear
nonproliferation treaty review conference.
It does not help President Obama's global credibility for
Washington to appear to disdain the U.N. inspectors' pending
report--especially when his one Western partner, France, now
insists on waiting for it And it is certainly awkward for the
president to hold the moral high ground when the pope is
leading prayer vigils and writing to world leaders decrying
the planned attack.
It may be that the world community places a thicker red
line on unilateral use of force than on punishing poison gas.
All the more reason for having Plan B in place to pick up the
pieces.

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